Week 562-565 - Pair-A-Morphosis - 06-11-2017

Pair-A-Morphosis

Coming home to our house after 11 years of renters has changed our lives. Here we are on 33rd wedding anniversary at the "Garden of the Elks" (Cape Girardeau, Missouri Elks) in 2007.

And here we are today after 10 weeks of working 24/7 on our house. Still together, still in love but a little more mature.

So what have we done the last month. Whew, where do we start? After 4 days of mowing and 7 hours of chipping wood, we got the property looking pretty good. Many thanks to daughter Emily and son-in-law Chad for coming for five days to help.

There were four acres to mow and eight piles of limbs to chip. Our last renters thought it would nice to trim all the trees around the house and leave it to us to chip them up.

We trimmed the oleanders to make a path to the back yard.

A big project was to revamp the concrete patio that had to be uprooted to repair a septic tank leak. The 1986 patio was colored brown that turned to pink. Unable to match the 31 year old colored concrete, we opted to lay in concrete pavers. The grandkids painted the inside of the pool walls. You can see what the hideous pool looked like in the last photo of this travelogue.

Meanwhile, inside, Melissa needed a photo studio for her photography business. The BIG room sufficed nicely.

It needed an update to transform it into a boudoir studio, see Melissa Jean Boudoir for personal, fun and tasteful art; for private eyes only.

Besides the visually obvious, we have steadily chewed away at dozens of projects:

Replacing 9 missing or burnt out light bulbs.
Replacing 8 damage solar pathway lights.
Installing a new living room ceiling fan and light.
Staining outside walkways and arched bridges.
Painting the kitchen.
8 hours of power washing the decks and patios.
Trimming trees above the roof and the defunct swimming pool.
Move, clean and replace thousands of rocks in the culverts and dry creeks.
Wash all the windows.
Scrap the calcium off the shower glass doors.
Fix a water leak in the upstairs bathroom.
Repair the four drip systems circuits.
Clean out the shop and water shed. Fix shed doors.
Spray the weeds with RoundUp. Spray the plants with fertilizer.
Install new drip system for the Vinca.

We built our house in 1977 and obtained homeowners insurance from Farmers. In 2006 we changed to landlord insurance. This year we converted back to a homeowners as it is now our primary residence. So after 40 years, Farmers felt it necessary to inspect our house. They did not like drop from the pool deck to the six inches of sand below. Obviously after 40 years with no problems, this is a seriously dangerous hazard. So to keep our insurance they required us to put up a safety fence around the defunct pool. They gave us two weeks to get the fence in place. By the last day we completed the fence and sent our agent this photo. Our email stated it was "a four foot fence with no gate around a defunct pool".

Dan, our agent, received the photos and called. He said "the fence looks great. What is it going to be?". We replied, "it is a safety fence around a defunct pool". The agent responded, "yes, but what is it going to be?". We returned, "it could be basket to catch all the oak leaves or a cock-fighting pit, but it is what you asked for. A safety fence around a defunct pool." "Okay" says Dan, "but what shall I tell the underwriter, what shall I tell them it is going to be?" Our final offer was "tell them it is the safety fence, that they asked for, around a defunct pool." Dan relented and said, "okay, I'll try that!". He called a few hours later and said the underwriters accepted our explanation. Whee!

With love, Pete, Ellen and Mandy

Photos from Jun 2017